I once had a managing editor who joked that whenever I took time off and she had to fill in on the sports page (yeah, small shop), she would make sports section entirely about gymnastics and figure skating.

You can laugh all you want about this sort of thing...but I know for a fact Gene Pope created an entire genre of American journalism by demanding his editors and writers at the National Enquirer write every story for a mythical Ethel in Keokuk, Iowa. And if you wrote a story that Mr. Pope thought could get Ethel's husband, George, to slap his hands and say, "Ethel, did you see this!" then you got a cash bonus.